Go Suck an Egg
by Sifl-senpai
Summary: Genos watches Saitama's face change to match nearly every color of the rainbow all in the span of one day. (Saigenos/Genosai)


Saitama compulsively looked up from his manga, as if struck by a sudden inspiration. "Well, we could go to another festival, I guess. Dunno where or when the closest one is, though."

"Another festival!" Genos exclaimed, looking up from his pile of laundry. "This time, you will surely win the goldfish game," he muttered. "Those damn brittle paper scoops were no match for you last time, but I am sure this time they will not get the better of you."

Saitama looked back down at his manga. "Relax, Genos. I only wanted to win one for that kid. Though, in retrospect, it was probably better I didn't. Little snot's brother woulda shaken the bag or something," Saitama glanced over a few more panels and turned the page. "Say, Genos, it's kinda cruel how we give out goldfish to kids like that, huh?"

Genos considered his growing pile of folded shirts with golden eyes. "How do you mean?"

"Well," said Saitama, "it's just, like, at the festival they don't even ask if the kid's a hellion or responsible or not. They just give 'em the fish. Kinda twisted, since there's no telling how they might act when they've got that much power over another living creature."

"Is refraining from shaking bags of goldfish part of what makes a strong hero?" Genos asked.

"Huh? Oh. Yeah," Saitama said, a small frown pulling at his smooth face. You could say that.

Genos abandoned his laundry to go write down this newest piece of wisdom.

The day was balmy and lazy, and Saitama had the sliding door open to let the breeze travel through the cramped living room and through the window of the sequestered kitchen. The wind chime, the singular prize Genos had managed to win at their last festival, sang a song to the gentle wind when it nudged and asked for one. If Saitama still had hair, it would be ruffling under the fingers of the weather, too.

"Oi, Genos," said Saitama. "Do you wanna go get groceries?"

"Why?" asked Genos. "The pantry is full. We went yesterday."

"Ah."

The curtains fluttered in the breeze and a bird lighted on the balcony before preening its feathers and taking off again.

"Oi, Genos," Saitama said again, his toes fidgeting against the floor. "Do you want to go look around town? King said they just came out with a new line of gashapon figures of the higher popularity ranks of the Association. Maybe there's one of you!"

Genos snapped a pair of boxers out into the breeze to banish the wrinkles with a decisive snap of his wrist. "Any collection that does not include you is sorely lacking," he said.

Saitama fidgeted more from his spot on the floor. "Well, you know. It's not that important."

"It's very important!" Genos countered. "Sensei is important."

Saitama scratched his head and looked at his book, and then sank back down into the floor. "So you don't want to go looking for one."

"Not particularly," Genos said.

Saitama looked down at his manga again, and pouted.

It was a beautiful day, really.

"Oi, Genos," Saitama said. "I'm bored."

Genos's eyes bled trails of light as he zeroed in on his Sensei. "We could have another spar," he said. "Saitama-sensei! I challenge you to another practice match!" He pivoted towards Saitama, planted his palms on the ground, and leaned forward into the man's face. "I will show you how strong I have become!"

Saitama tucked his face into his chest at Genos's scrutiny and created a most unflattering layering of the flesh on his chin, and then he shrank farther into the bunched fabric of his white t-shirt. The contrast to the recent and thorough tanning of his face from their last trip to the beach made him look like a smooth brown egg sitting unwrapped in its carton. "Is that really what you want to do?"

"Yes!"

Saitama fidgeted some more, and then smiled and scratched at the back of his head. "Okay, okay, fine."

The two of them decided on okonomiyaki for dinner afterwards. Genos followed Saitama off the battlefield in a daze with his hair distinctly quaffed in a careless, messy, baffled arrangement and an equally star-struck expression on his face.

But it was Saitama who waxed with awe. "You're so cool!" he said. "Your arms are cool, your moves are cool. It's so cool to watch you do stuff." He cast a set of sly eyes at Genos. "But that's why you're so popular, mister Demon Cyborg." He nudged his companion in his bulging metal shoulder. "I'm jealous."

"Ah," was all Genos could say.

"C'mon, c'mon, admit it. You know how cool you are, you big showoff."

"I am nothing in the face of your might," Genos answered.

"Yeah, well, nobody is, so that's not exactly something to beat yourself up about." He waved the thought away like a bad stench. "Anyway, I'm kind of excited. This new stand has, like, a deal to get people to try it, you know? I might even get shrimp with mine." Saitama tugged at the strings of his hoodie. "The cabbage is the best part about it, though. Hmm…" he altered his steps so he fell in line with Genos as they walked along. "What do you think? What are you gonna get?"

Genos blinked. "Oh. I don't know. Maybe sriracha?"

"On okonomiyaki?! Sriracha?! Really?!" Saitama looked somewhere between horrified and baffled. "Do they even have that?! You gonna cool it down with any mayonnaise, or, like, some mushrooms or something?

"No," Genos deadpanned.

Saitama's mouth popped open and lengthened his face so his head looked even more like it belonged in a nest somewhere. His scalp glimmered with the first hints of the sunset like his skin was absorbing colors from a vat of unseen yellow-orange dye.

"Perhaps… egg." Genos conceded, his eyes darting to and from the crown of Saitama's head.

His sensei mulled the concept over in his moving, speechless mouth, and then finally said, "Okay. Okay. That might be good. Okay."

Saitama had a bite of Genos's make-your-own okonomiyaki, and was so overwhelmed by the resulting coughing for that he subsequently turned purple and took about twenty minutes to calm down and finish his own meal.

That night, as the two of them were turning in for the night, his pallor went white and he disappeared into the bathroom until a little after dawn while Genos faithfully waited by the door with a stack of additional rolls of toilet paper to administer as needed.

"Was something on our food spoiled, or something?!" Saitama lamented upon exit. "Is that what's caused this?!"

Genos shook his head and entered the bathroom with a bottle of bleach and rubber gloves in and on his hands respectively. "My systems indicated nothing unsound about the contents of our meal, microbial or otherwise," he said. "Perhaps something on our okonomiyaki disagrees with you in particular. I will have to discover what this was and have a talk with the owner of the stall about offering food that does not agree with Sensei's constitution."

"N-no, if the ingredients were fine, then there's no point getting mad at them for something that I in particular don't jive with." Saitama fixed a glass of water and winced pitifully at the rising sun. "What was in your dinner, anyway? You had so much sriracha on there that it just tasted like fire."

Genos paused in scrubbing the toilet. "Sriracha, a fried egg, shichimi, curry tofu, and hot udon, topped with spicy furikake and wasabi. They did not offer sardines, otherwise I would have gotten them as well."

Saitama all but dropped his water glass on the counter and the liquid poured down his chin down his open jaw. "Genos," he said.

The cyborg boy popped his head from the bathroom and considered Saitama's sickly green face. "Yes, Sensei?"

"That's disgusting," Saitama said, wiping his tongue on his teeth and then forcing down another sip of water. "I can't believe I paid for such a monstrosity."

"My apolo-"

Saitama held up a hand. "No! Nope. Don't say anything else. I need a moment to get over this before I try and take you out again."

Genos bowed and excused himself to go finish cleaning the bathroom, and then hung the winter quilt over the windows to keep the room dark while they both caught up on their sleep.

About twelve minutes into it, Genos unceremoniously turned towards Saitama and said, "Sensei. You said you took me out. Did you mean that you had asked me out on a date today?"

Saitama's eyes were suddenly upon him and perfectly round within his perfectly pink face, like someone had pasted a pair of googly eyes to the back of his head and flipped his ears around to match. "Do you have to do this now?"

"There is no time like the present," Genos said.

"Why are you always so weird about this kind of thing?! Don't make it weird, Genos. I'm too tired for weird."

"Then I will make it weird when you are more awake."

Saitama's huge eyes drew even closer to Genos. "But that's the thing! You make it weird one hundred percent of the time, Genos! You open your mouth, and then weird just comes out!" Saitama told him. "You are the weirdest thing in my life!"

"It is Sensei who champions the exceptional and unusual hair loss," Genos challenged.

"Exceptional and unusu-?!" Ten seconds of dead airtime came and went through the apartment. "Did you just call me bald?! Hey! Being bald isn't weird! It's natural!"

"Of course, everything about you is unusually exceptional." Genos sat up to look him in the eyes with a satisfied clunk of metal.

Saitama worked his mouth, pointed his finger, and then crossed his arms. "Well, your pajama sleeves look stupid!"

"An excellent and scathing retort, as expected of Sensei, but I am afraid I don't have any pajama sleeves."

Saitama ground his teeth and then fled under his pink and red blanket, except for his face. He stuck his tongue out. "Go suck an egg!"

To which Genos zeroed in on Saitama's rounded head and retorted, "Is that a request?"

"Huh? What do-?" His dull eyes lit up as he understood the significance of Genos's examination, and his face turned as red as the hearts on his blanket. "You little shit!" He snatched his pillow and slapped Genos in the face with it, once, twice, three times. "You wanna 'nother spar? You lookin' for a fight?! I'll show you who's the egghead, egghead!" The pillow burst and a mix of feathers and cheap polyester flew everywhere. Genos received a few more swats from the disembodied pillow case, just for good measure, until Saitama took a look at the mess.

"Look what you made me do!" A feather landed on Saitama's head. He blew upwards on his own face to banish it, but it stubbornly clung to him.

Genos mercifully plucked it from him. "A blessing in disguise. It seems you've sprouted feathers instead of hair," he said.

Saitama spluttered.

"Please take me out again," Genos said. "Or I will take you out! I will buy you whatever you like."

"You'll buy me a new pillow, is what you'll do," Saitama mumbled, but his heart was not in it.

Genos moved his closer to Saitama. "I would be honored if you would share mine."

"C'mon, that's weird," Saitama said, rubbing both sides of his nose with a thumb and forefinger and then laying his head down.

Genos's eyes glinted as he followed suit, and then pulled Saitama close. "Then don't make it weird, Sensei."


End file.
